Hardcastle, Laver, and Gibbon permeate the field of phonetic
sciences with a collection of revised and brand-new papers that
employ a multidisciplinary approach to examining speech production.
They contend that major scientific developments in research
methodology practices and instrumental and auditory analyses during
the past decade necessitate an in-depth exploration of the
phonological, phonetic, and physiological factors that help
explicate speech processes. The editors underpin this argument
through the contents of the five parts of the volume by integrating
speech-related areas such as aerodynamics, speech acquisition, and
prosody to highlight effective techniques used to analyse language
behaviour.

Part I (“Experimental phonetics”) commences with Stone’s
(Chapter 1) illumination of useful imaging (Cinema-Magnetic
Resonance Imaging, or Cine-MRI) and point-tracking measurement
techniques (Electromagnetic Articulometer, or EMA) employed to
analyse the oral vocal tract. The author points to the advantages
of direct (fast tracking of simultaneous articulatory movement) and
indirect (capturing images of internal vocal tract structures)
measurement techniques in order to endorse integrated analyses of
the vocal tract which examine points of articulatory behaviour over
time and the deformation of jawbone and tongue tissue during speech
production. In Chapter 2, Shadle explores aerodynamic models that
simulate air/fluid motion: Maeda’s (1987) model of coherent
and friction sources of voiced and voiceless stops and Gunter’s
(2003) finite element model of the interaction of vocal folds
during the speech production of trills. The author applies
mathematical formulas to these and other similar models to
demonstrate the difficulty in generating quantitative results that
closely resemble the properties of air/fluid motion during speech
production. In Chapter 3, Harrington analyses the acoustic
transitioning of vowel and consonant sounds (F1, F2, and F3) while
considering factors such as duration, spectral tilt, and vowel
targets. The author compares spectrograms and line graphs of
centralisation, coarticulation, and assimilation processes so as to
contend that lengthening, voice onset time (VOT), and spectral
shape are all major factors that affect the syntagmatic
distribution of acoustic variation. Chapter 4 (Hirse) focuses on
laryngeal electromyography (EMG) — the examination of muscle fiber
activity — in order to detail the physiological functioning of the
larynx. The author argues that the reciprocation activity of the
abductor muscle (posterior cricoarytenoid, or PCA) and the adductor
muscle (interarytenoid, or INT) does not clearly demonstrate how
the autonomic nervous system controls the movement of the vocal
folds and glottis.

Beck (Chapter 5) begins Part II (“Biological perspectives”) by
shedding light on the relationship between the organic development
of the vocal apparatus and speech output. The author explicates
environmental (nutrition) and genetic factors (rate of growth) that
affect inter- and intra-speaker organic characteristics so as to
bolster the meticulous analysis of organic variation in phonetic
variation studies. In Chapter 6, Ackermann and Ziegler review how
primary brain components (basal ganglia, cerebellum, and
sensorimotor cortex) manage the hemodynamic activation of speech
motor control. They explicate prearticulatory and prephonetic
speech processes of neurophysiological disorders (verbal apraxia
and dysarthria) in order to establish that the stimulation of vocal
tract muscles substantially impacts speech production. Smith
vivifies Chapter 7 by describing the speech motor development of
infants, adolescents, and adults. The author asserts that
underdeveloped neural network fiber connections — not
underdeveloped physiological characteristics — account for slow
rates of velocity exhibited in children and young adults’ orofacial
speech output patterns.

Part III (“Modeling speech production and perception”) starts
with Davis’s (Chapter 8) discussion of the theoretical background
of phonological and phonetic approaches used to examine speech
acquisition. The author argues for the integration of
formalist/phonological and functionalist/phonetic paradigms so as
to develop cohesive theories of speech acquisition. In Chapter 9,
Fornetani and Recasens address how articulatory gestures impinge on
connected speech processes: assimilation and anticipatory and
carry-over coarticulation. They contest Lindblom’s (1990)
adaptive variability theory by aligning themselves with gestural
phonology theory, which supports the examination of gestural
overlap as a non-categorical phonetic process of speech production.
Löfqvist (Chapter 10) investigates the perturbation of vocal tract
articulators (tongue, jaw, and lips) during the process of speech
production. The author highlights Asatryan and Feldman’s (1965)
equilibrium-point model in order to contend that coordinated
agonist/antagonist muscular movements reflect, in...

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